WJ-SPOTS#1 <42> Martine Neddam aka Mouchette

About WJ-SPOTS

WJ-SPOTS is a project that was conceived of and designed by media curator Anne Roquigny, in which artists, critics, thinkers, inventors, researchers, curators, organizers and producers of cultural events are invited to look back on 15 years of Internet history.

/ My art work has always focused on portraying language and the
performativity of language. I’ve been interested in the theory of acts
of language for a very long time. Several philosophers, among whom
Austin, a British philosopher from the 60’s, have helped to develop a
formal theory around this exciting subject. His book, How To Do
Things With Words, lay the ground work for the theory of acts of language.
Other theoreticians, such as Derrida or Searle, followed suit.
It’s a subject that has always underscored my practice: how de we use
acts of language, and how can they be portrayed as performance?
My exhibitions, in museums, and galleries, focused on the portrayal
and depiction of texts. Like, for example, Marche sur moi (Walk on
Me) — created in the cupola of the Gemeente Museum in Arnhem,
in 1992. It’s a form of personal presence. Something is speaking; you
don’t know who is talking, but the words catch your attention — and
Laws are not subject to intellectual property, a publically commissioned
project in a court house. Laws are highly performative texts…
Internet had not yet been invented. The raw material for these pieces
of art was language. What was important, for me, was that my work
be displayed in a public space. Texts acquire meaning in function of
their environment and are interpreted by specific types of audiences.
In a museum, that audience is the public, while the public of a court
house couldn’t care less about art. That public’s attention is captured
by texts that express something about what they are experiencing.

// At the beginning, Internet was a very unique space, a space of freedom,
with no rules… like a jungle. Back then, I was involved in big budget,
publically commissioned projects, with lots of responsibilities,
working with all types of institutions, each with its opinions to give:
so many pitfalls to step over… I didn’t feel like I was free at all.
In 1996, with the arrival of Internet, it was very easy to do things
because HTML was, at first, a very simple language… It wasn’t expensive;
all you needed was a connection. You could be completely spontaneous,
unlike those big, public space projects, where you would have quite a
few other things going on in your head, because it sometimes took
four or five years for a piece of art work to go from its inception stage
to its presentation to the public.
Internet was a medium that made it possible to address the public with
incredibly rudimentary means, which were basically only dependent
upon individuals connected to each other via a very direct network,
one individual to another. In 1996, I would stroll about the Internet
all the time, I would watch what was happening there and I would be
completely fascinated. It was the beginning of a world, a world with
no rules, which created its own rules, where everything was done by
language. There were few images, it was all mainly texts. You clicked
on a word with a link behind it, and you changed pages: it was an
unmistakable act of language!
The first net.artists knew each other and would visit each other on line.
In 2001, in order to show my artist friends from the net, I organized a
WJ event for Mouchette called Last Birthday Party <http://mouchette.org/
birthday/index.html>… Here are the links of some artist friends that
are still alive (the links, I mean…):
Jan Robert Leegte, still active: <http://leegte.org>
A Korean artist whose name I’ve forgotten: <www.hellobook.org>
Peter Luining, who is doing quite different work and who has lost
25 kg: <http://lfoundation.org/>
Ze Pavu Boys : <www.pavu.com/>
D2B, very “old school”, true to form: <http://d2b.org/>
Innergirl, who is gone, but whose work I’ve held on to:
<http://mouchette.org/birthday/mouchette_bday.html>

/// In the collaborative art work I’ve created with surfers, we speculate
together about issues involving life and death, issues which have been
transformed since the appearance of the net. For example, about the
death of a fly: Lullaby for a dead fly
<http://mouchette.org/fly/flies.html>, and How do you commit suicide
when you’re under 13? <http://mouchette.org/suicide/xmasf.html>.
Incidentally, I deleted the French version of that piece following
threats from the police… but here’s a small sample of some answers
to that question in French:
<http://mouchette.org/suicide/answers.php3?search=il+y+a>

//// The only thing I know for sure, is that I’m going to continue to
create on the net. At times I’ll be recycling old materials in order to
create new art work (Grand Soir, an art piece meant to be projected
on a screen hung up in a museum, composed of comments from the
“Suicide Kit”).
I’m also continuing to explore the notion of virtual characters of all
types and, this is a first, I’ve done my “coming out” as anonymous
author of Mouchette, David Still, etc.
Yes, my name is Martine Neddam.